The Athomine Language

Last update: 14 September 2007

Introduction

History

Athomine was less heavily dialectalised than Liotan, although there were enough important differences across the dialects to be worth mentioning. The dialects were generally grouped into northern, central, and southern; a south-east subgroup, consisting of the most conservative dialects, is also recognised here.

Phonology

Consonants

The obstruents had voiced allophones [b d dZ g] and [v D z Z G] between vowels. These were regular in northern dialects, but less common in the central dialects where their appearance was conditioned by the stress, and very unusual in southern dialects.

Consonant assimilations were prominent in Athomine. The most consistent assimilation was that of /m/ or /n/ to a following consonant, creating a series of geminates (double consonants); further geminates developed when /lr/ and /rl/ became /rr/ and /ll/.

A stop became the corresponding fricative before another stop, thus /kt/ > /xt/ and /pk/ > /fk/, while a fricative became the corresponding stop before another fricative (almost always /s/, somethimes /T/), so /fs Ts xs/ > /ps ts ks/. Combinations of stop + fricative underwent both assimilations: the stop became a fricative, and the original fricative became a stop; for example /tx/ > /Tx/ > /Tk/. Note that, exceptionally, /Ss Cs/ > /SS/; these assimilations are not marked in transcription, thus rics "house" is preferred to rixx. All of these assimilations, especially those with /s/ and /t/, were common in the morphology.

Representing stops, fricatives, and liquids by T F L respectively, the following consonant clusters were permitted:

• Initial: sT TL FL and sTL.
• Medial: TT TL Ts; FF FT FL; LL LT LF; NN and LsT LTs FTs FTT LTT FTL.
• Final: as medial, except where ending in L.

Additionally, TsT and TsL were only found medially, and only in compounds.

Vowels

The pronunciation of the vowels and diphthongs varied considerably across the dialects. In the south and south-east, the qualities of the long vowels were the same as those of the short vowels, typically [i E a O u 1]. The central and northern dialects pronounced the short vowels more centrally, approximately [I e_o @ o_o u 1_o]; the northern dialects went further and eliminated distinctive vowel length altogether, replacing the distinction of quantity with one of quality. The pronunciation of some /1/ as a rounded vowel [}], betraying this phoneme's origin in a merger, was confined to the south-east and was generally regarded as old-fashioned.

/ai/ and /au/ were inherited from Sunovian; the other diphthongs were the results of contractions between two short vowels. These contractions were prominent in verbal and derivational morphology, but were common and largely straightforward:

The outcomes of combinations with /1/ were the same as those with /i/ or /u/, depending on the origin of the /1/, except that /1/ + /1/ of course became /1:/. The closing diphthongs were all falling, i.e. the first element was pronounced more strongly than the second. The opening diphthongs were falling in the south and centre and rising in the north; thus /ue/ was [ue_X] or [we] respectively.

In some environments /ei ai oi/ and /eu au ou/ merged with /i: e: 1:/ and /1: o: u:/ in speech. These mergers were regular in all dialects in syllables which ended with two consonants. In central and northern dialects they also occurred in unstressed syllables, and in northern dialects they were furthermore not uncommon in stressed closed syllables.

Stress

In speech, short unstressed vowels were frequently elided between two other syllables, triggering consonant assimilations; thus /melTkaiŝ/ for "eleven".

Summary of dialect differences

Grammar

Nouns

One noun from each declension is declined in full below. Note the assimilations with /s/ in most absolutive singulars and in the partitives of the first subgroup of the first declension, and with /t/ in the dative plurals of the first two declensions.

Uses of the cases

• It was preceded by a preposition.
• It was in the partitive after a number.
• It modified another noun, in which case it was in the genitive or partitive case and preceded the modified noun.

The choice of the genitive or partitive case in the last instance, much like as in Mossian, depended on whether the relationship between the two nouns was alienable or inalienable. The difference may be observed in raisy rices "person's house" and raises ŝir "person's eye"; to the Athomine mind, a house can be taken from a person, but an eye cannot; the first relationship was therefore inalienable, and "person" was in the partitive. In a similar way, sass hars would be usual for "my son", with inalienable possession; the alienable sam hars would have a more restricted and specalised usage.

Determiners

There were no articles in Athomine; rics meant both "a house" and "the house".

Nouns of quantity

• mas masas "all"
• causs causas "much, a lot"
• oms omis "more"
• xins xinos "some, any"
• sets setas "less"
• its iŝis "few, little, not much"
• léts létas "none"

Thus mas kappési "all of the names", oms ricési "more houses". Note also híss kalsa ricési "some of the man's houses".

Numbers

"Eleven" to "nineteen" were reduced compounds of the unit, ŝi "and, plus", and haiŝ: melŝihaiŝ "11", nuhtihaiŝ "16"; note that /xT/ became /xt/, as in "40, 60, 70, 90". "21" through "29" similarly were compounds with hers, thus selŝihers "23", horŝihers "28". The higher numbers up to "99" followed the same pattern: turŝirixts "45", sihtisihts "99".

Nouns following cardinal numbers could be in the absolutive or partitive cases; the difference in meaning is clear from sic ricein "two houses", but sic ricési "two of the houses". The ordinal numbers were syntactically nouns of quantity, thus suf rices "the second house", with "house" in the partitive (effectively "the second of the house").

Pronouns

The indefinite pronoun, reduced in the absolutve singular to /ha/ or the assimilated form /ka/, was used as the basis for many further pronouns:

• Possessive pronouns, with the genitives of the personal pronouns: sahha "mine", tehha "yours", kaxka "ours" (with /tSx/ > /Sk/), ŝuhha "theirs".
• The three demonstrative pronouns, with the demonstrative particles: ehha ahha arha "this one, that one, yonder one".
• With nouns of quantity: maska "everybody, everything", xíhha "somebody, anybody, something, anything", léŝka "nobody, nothing".

Prepositions

Prepositions were grouped according to the number of cases in which the following noun could appear. One-case prepositions most commonly required the dative, such as nŭm and saur: nŭm ricei "to the house" (colloquially "home, homewards"), saur ricei "from the house". A few required the genitive or partitive: cus mexco "along the road", fruc ricy "opposite the house".

Two-case prepositions took the dative to express motion and the genitive to express rest. The most important of them were míst "on", paic "in", pat "outside", and meŝ "off"; thus paic ricy "inside the house", míst ricy "on top of the house", but paic ricei "into the house", míst ricei "onto the house".

Where a preposition could govern three cases, the dative expressed motion towards, the genitive rest, and the partitive motion away from: letti ricés "from in front of the house" (partitive), letti ricei "to in front of the house" (dative), letti ricy "in front of the house" (genitive).

A preposition was never followed by a noun in the absolutive.

Verbs

• Internal and external agency;
• Present, past, and future tenses;
• Imperfective, perfective, and habitual aspects;
• Subject, direct object, and indirect object arguments.

In addition, each verb had one infinitive for each combination of tense and agency, and four participles. Verbs will be cited in the external present infinitive, which ended in /t/ or /T/, and are given in the external unless specified otherwise.

Agency

The distinction between internal and external agency, as in Mossian, expressed whether the verbal action was considered to originate within the verbal subject or to emanate from elsewhere. For example, "I slide" with internal agency would imply that the sliding was a deliberate intention on my part, whereas external agency would imply that it was an accident. Similarly, "we met yesterday" would use internal agency if the meeting was planned but external agency otherwise (cf English "we bumped into each other"), and "I was there" with external agency would be similar to English "I found myself there".

Athomine verbs originally indicated external agency by default; internal agency was expressed by suffixing an /a/ which combined with the thematic vowel where present.

Structure of a verb

(Indirect object prefix) - Root - (Thematic vowel) - (Tense suffix) - Subject and object suffixes

There were two series of subject and object suffixes, one which followed vowels and one which followed consonants. The first series was used in the past and future, the second in the present.

The quality of the thematic vowel grouped verbs into six distinct conjugations, broadly speaking as follows:

• Athematic verbs, with no thematic vowel for external agency. Many were among the oldest and most fundamental verbs, which had become thematic elsewhere in Sunovian but remained athematic in Athomine; for example eht "to go", mart "to give" (compare Liotan mairíor, with thematic /i/). These verbs had thematic /a/ in the internal: ekkaŝ, maraŝ.
• Verbs in /a/. Most of these were primary verbs which had become thematic, such as prakaŝ "to sleep". The internal had thematic /a:/, an in some verb forms /e/.
• Verbs in /i/ and /u/; these verbs were related to third-declension nouns, such as feltiŝ "to hear" (felti "a noise"), nikuŝ "to begin" (niku "start"). The thematic vowels in the internal were /e/ and /o/.
• Verbs in /e:/. These were typically denominative and adjectival verbs, such as hainéŝ "to fish" and keŝéŝ "to be large"; they had thematic /ia/ in the internal.
• Verbs in /o:/, usually causatives such as stróŝ "to raise" (related to Liotan sar "high"). The thematic vowel was /ua/ in the internal.

Intransitive verbs

The past imperfective was formed with the past stem and the consonantal endings. The past stem of athematic verbs was derived from the present stem in four ways, depending on the verb:

• Suppletion, i.e. the use of a different stem altogether: ís-e (originally the past of "to become") "I was going".
• Change of stem vowel: mer-ake "we were giving". Typically, /a e o/ > /e i 1/, /ai ei oi/ > /i: i: 1:/, and /au eu ou/ all > /1:/.
• Suffixed /s/ to the stem, with the usual assimilations: hut-s-ir "I was situated", present huŝir.
• Doubling of the final consonant of the stem, originally from an infixed nasal consonant: huŝŝir. This formation was unproductive and was confined to south-eastern dialects.

Different past stems for a given athematic verb often appeared in different dialects, sometimes combining two formations; for example, alongside leksar were also found lihar, lehiar, and liksar. The past stems of thematic verbs added /-in-/ to the present stem, with the appropriate contractions: prakaine "I was sleeping", haineine "I was fishing", stroine "I was raising".

The suffixed /s/ also appeared in the narrative past tense, which was not often used in speech but was common in writing. It was formed by adding -is- to the present stem of the verb after the thematic vowel: lehaise "I slipped", ekkise "I went".

The internal future imperfective added the athematic endings to the future stem, which was formed from the present stem by suffixing /-1:s-/ to athematic verbs, or /-us-/ with the appropriate assimilation to thematic verbs: ekk-ŭs-e "I will go", nik-ús-e "I will begin", str-ous-e "I will raise". /a/-stem verbs had /-eus-/, thus prak-eus-e "I will sleep".

The perfective and habitual aspects consisted of a participle, which conveyed the distinctions of aspect and agency, and the appropriate auxiliary verb, which expressed the tense. The auxiliary, which was originally a form of "to be", conjugated as follows in the present and past:

The endings for the participles were added to the thematic vowel, or to the stem plus /i/ for athematic verbs. The ending of the perfective participle was -ina in the internal and -isa in the external, thus ekkina/ekkisa exe "I have gone", prakaina/prakaisa huke "we have slept", honaina/honeisa exka "it has rained". The corresponding habitual participles had -itha and -iha: ekkitha/ekkiha exe "I go, I tend to go", prakaitha/prakeiha xuke "I sleep", honaitha/honeiha exka "it rains".

The future auxiliary was xŭs- with the athematic endings. The initial /e/ of the present auxiliary was not pronounced in central and northern dialects.

Infinitives

In the imperfective aspect, the external infinitives of "to go" were present eht, past íst, and future ekkŭst, and the corresponding internal infinitives were ekkaŝ ísaŝ ekkóst; note that /au/ > /o:/ in a doubly-closed syllable. The external infinitives of "to sleep" were prakaŝ prakett prakŭst, and the the internal infinitives were prakáŝ prakaxt prakóst.

The perfective and habitual infinitives were combinations of the appropriate pariticple and infinitive of the auxiliary. The infinitives were present ext, past xuŝ, and future xŭst: ekkina ext "to have gone", prakaita xŭst more or less "to be going to sleep regularly".

Summary of intransitive verbal forms

Transitive verbs

The order of the suffixes depended on the agency of the verb. In the internal, the suffix came first; thus "I see you", strictly speaking closer in meaning to "I look at you", was ŝair-e-ra-t. The external placed the object first, with the usual change of thematic vowel; thus ŝair-i-ta-r had more or less the same connotations as the English. Similarly, "you see me" was respectively ŝair-e-fa-s and ŝair-i-sa-f.

In the perfective and habitual aspects, the suffixes were added to the auxiliary verb, with the past singular taking the athematic suffixes. For example, the internal present and past perfective of "I see you" were ŝaireita exet and ŝaireina céret, and the corresponding externals were ŝairíha exte and ŝairísa céŝe.

If either the subject or the object was a noun (strictly speaking, a noun phrase), the noun preceded the verb, and the third person singular suffix was used as before: kapps ŝaireran "I see the goose", kappén ŝaireita céran "I used to see the geese". The external forms of these were kapps ŝaireine and kappén ŝairésa céne.

If both the subject and object were nouns, they preceded the verb in the appropriate order: subject first if the verb was in the internal, object if it was in the external. Thus "the man sees the goose" was kals kapps ŝairinan (internal) or kapps kals ŝairenan (external), with the thematic vowel showing the order of the nouns. The most complicated transitive verb forms were the habitual or perfective aspects of verbs with nouns as both subjects and objects; for example kals kapps ŝaireina exin "the man has seen the goose", which is analysed as man goose see-INTERNAL-PERFECTIVE AUXILIARY(3 sing)-OBJECT(3 sing).

In speech, the third person endings -n and -nen were often omitted when referring to nouns, and not uncommonly when actually pronominal; ŝairir on its own could mean "I see it" if a possible third person object had already been mentioned or was implied in some other way.

Indirect objects

For example, using the athematic verb mar- "to give" (past mer-) were formed na-mar-e-n "I give it to him/her", ra-mar-i-n "he/she gives it to me", and ka-mer-ene-t "they were giving you to us".

The /l/ in the relative prefix was used before vowels, so él-ísa-r "to which I was going", ekkina él-exe "to which I went". The final vowels of the other indirect object prefixes contracted with a following short vowel, including the initial vowel of the auxiliary; thus "I gave it to her" was maraina naixen, with naixen from na-exe-n, and "I go to the house" was ricei naikke. The prefixes did not contract with a following long vowel; instead, /t/, from an older dative case suffix, was inserted: na-t-ísa-r "I was going to it".

Dialectal variations in athematic suffixes

The northern dialects added the consonants of the thematic endings to the relative and singular athematic vowel endings (except the 2 def), giving the endings -er -um -in; thus ekk-er, ekk-um "you are going", ekk-in "he/she/it is going".

The imperative

• ehte! "go!" (2 def singular)
• ehtu! "go!" (2 fam singular)
• ehti! "let him/her/it go!" (3 singular)
• ehtak! "let us go!" (1 plural)
• ehtes(t)! "go!" (2 def plural)
• ehtet! "go!" (2 fam plural)
• ehten! "let them go!" (3 plural)

The direct and indirect object affixes were added to the imperative as usual: sa-mart-e-n "give it to me!".

Negative and interrogative

A statement was turned into a question with the particle tau: tau prakan "is he sleeping?". Again, this particle combined with the auxiliary: prakaina tauxe "Have I slept?", prakaina tauxti "will he sleep?". With the plural auxiliary it became tu, from which the /u/ was lost in the present: prakaina cuke "have we slept?" (with /tSuke/ from /tu Suke/), prakaina tu-cíke "did we sleep?". In southern dialects the /u/ was infixed into the past of the auxilary, e.g. cuer cŭke, from c-u-er c-u-ike, for tu-cér tu-cíke.

The answer to a question simply repeated the verb: tau prakan? prakan "is he sleeping?", "yes, he is".

To be

1. When used to equate one referent with another, the athematic endings were added to, unusually, one of several stems which ended in vowels and made no distinctions of agency or aspect.

The internal present stem was tu- in the positive, with negative la- and interrogative -ta. Thus:

• kals tue "I am a man", kapps tŭ "it is a goose" (with /t1:/ from /tui/).
• kals lá "I am not a man", kapps tai "it is not a goose".
• kals tá "Am I a man?", kapps lai "is it a goose?".

The stems were ca- aca- axta- in the past tense and stu- astu- axtu- in the future.

2. The meaning of "to be situated" was provided by the third conjugation verb huŝiŝ, thus letti ricés huŝir "I am in front of the house".

3. "I exist" in a metaphysical or existential sense was the athematic verb pice, whose thematic suppletive past exkaŝ appears in the first line of the Babel text. It might have be said of the Norwegian Blue that léts omis pici.

4. For the equivalents of "to be" with adjectives, see adjectival verbs below.

Adjectival verbs

The choice of internal or external agency parallelled the Liotan distinction between dó and eich. Thus the internal lets cohien "the bread is cold" would be used if the bread could never be anything else but cold, but lets cohén implied that it was at one time, or in the future would be. Similarly sass líroin murien "my hair is brown" (naturally), but sass líroin murén "my hair is brown" (because I've dyed it, although it is usually fair).

The equivalents of participles or verbal adjectives were straightforward in Athomine: "the eaten bread" was cím-i-la-h lets, i.e. eat(past)-ext-rel-indef bread(abs); compare caimilah lets "the bread which is being eaten", with the present of the verb. "The eating geese", i.e. "the geese which are eating", was similarly caimel kappén.

Comparisons

Causatives

Adverbials

The basic interrogative pronoun was ki "who, which, what?". This was used both as a pronoun and an adjective: ki fessifan "what did you say?", ki lets caimen "which bread am I eating?".

Many adverbs of place were compounds with a particle -tu, which declined like a noun of the third declension. For example, from the demonstrative particles were formed:

• etty "here", ettue "to here, hither", ettus "hence, from here"
• ahty "there", ahtue "to there, thither", ahtus "thence, from there"
• arty "yonder", artue "to yonder", artus "from yonder"

Similarly, the relative pronoun combined to give the relative adverbs catty "where", cattue "to where", castus "from where"; and the interrogative pronoun gave the corresponding interrogative adverbs kitty kittue kistus.

With nouns of quantity were formed masty "everywhere", xitty "somewhere, anywhere", létty "nowhere".

Conjunctions

Conjunctions which expressed dependency between two clauses had two forms depending on the order of the clauses, mirroring the distinction between internal and external agents of verbs and exhibiting the same vowel alternations. For example, the conjunction indicating a cause was ŝut if the independent clause preceded and ŝuta if it followed; tefar ŝut socer was thus more or less equivalent to "I am tired, so I am sitting down", and socer ŝuta tefar was "I am sitting down, because I am tired".

Many conjunctions required particular combinations of tenses. One such was loxe loxi "if", whose independent clause was in the future; thus tefte loxi socŭse and socŭse loxe tefause both meant "if I am tired, I will sit down". Similarly with re ri "in order to": tefar re prakeuse "I am sitting down to sleep", also prakeuse ri tefar.

Syntax

Word order

Uses of the tenses and aspects

The past narrative, as its name implies, was the usual tense used in narrating past events, such as when telling stories.

The future tense, not the present as in English, was used after certain conjunctions, of which loxe/loxi and re/ri have already been mentioned.

Uses of the non-personal pronouns

The indefinite pronoun expressed the agent of passive transitive verbs, thus caiminah or caimehan "it is being eaten", and the subject of weather verbs, as with honéh "it is raining".

The reflexive pronoun was always used if the subject and object of the verb were the same, as in sulórak or sulukar "I wash myself". It could never be used as the subject of the verb, unlike in Liotan. Unlike Rachovian, however, its genitive and partitive were not used to refer to an argument which was the same as the verbal subject; "he eats his (own) bread" was usually ŝaun lets caimanan, with the normal third person singular genitive.

The switch reference pronoun referred to a third person argument which was not the subject of the verb when another third person argument was the subject. Thus "he eats his (someone else's) bread" was coh lets caimanan, and "he gave the man his (the boy's) bread" was kalsai coh lets namaranan.

A verbal phrase which contained the relative pronoun preceded its antecedent, so that "the goose which I saw" was ŝaireral kapps or ŝairilar kapps, and "the geese which are eating the bread" was lets caimilan kappén.

Dependent clauses

V1-S1, V2-S1 >> V2(vn) V1-S1
íne, caimŭse >> caimŭst íne
"I want, I will eat" >> "I want to eat"

V1-S1, V2-S2 >> S2(gen) V2(vn) V1-S1
íne, caimŭset >> teh caimŭst íne
"I want, you will eat" >> "I want you to eat"

V1-S1, O2 V2-S1 >> O2(part) V2(vn) V1-S1
íne, lets caimŭse >> letas caimŭst íne
"I want, I will eat the bread" >> "I want to eat the bread"

V1-S1, O2 V2-S2 >> S2(gen) O2(part) V2 (vn) V1-S1
íne, lets caimŭse >> teh letas caimŭst íne
"I want, you will eat the bread" >> "I want you to eat the bread"

All of these have the verbal noun in the future tense; the present, as in íne caimiŝ, implied something closer to "I want to be eating". Note, too, the peculiar Athomine idiom for passive dependency: "the bread needs to be eaten" was lets ham caimŭst auni, with the genitive of the indefinite pronoun.

Causatives were formed in the same way, with the verb ŝŭtaŝ: ŝaun ehtiŝ ŝŭtar "I make them go", ŝan letas caittiŝ ŝŭtar "I make him eat the bread".

Derivational morphology

Nominal suffixes

Nominae agentis, the names of people who did something, were most commonly formed with the suffix -ex -exen added to the appropriate verbal stem:

• hanaŝ "to sing" -> hanaix "singer", as distinct from hanal rais "someone who is singing"
• ŝairiŝ "to see, look" -> ŝairiex "watchman"

Result nouns were formed with a variety of suffixes, the commonest being -af -afen, -ah -ahen, and -esk -esken. The first of these was usually added to the present stem, the other two to the past stem:

• prakaŝ "to sleep" -> prakáf "sleep, rest"
• mariŝ "to give" -> maraf "offering, gift"
• ossaŝ "to have cut" -> ossáh "cut, incision"
• ísaŝ "to have gone" -> ísáh "journey, travel"
• meriŝ "to have given" -> meriesk "gift, present, thing given"

Many abstract nouns were effectively result nouns derived from adjectival verbs, with shortened thematic vowel:

• sairéŝ "to be red" -> sairesks "red, redness, red colour"
• koréŝ "to be fast" -> koresks "speed"

Note also keŝesk "size, greatness", whose dative was keŝeske; this word, syncopated to /keTske/ and assimilated to ketske, was the usual form of address when speaking to deities.

Other abstract nouns were third-declension nouns in /-i/ and /-u/, often formed from the verb with a change in the stem vowel:

• faltiŝ "to hear, listen" -> felti "sound"

Substances sometimes had the suffixes -alt- -art- -est-:

• turalts "gold"
• nelarts "soil, earth"

• tafah tafaken "chair, seat"
• sitaks sitaksain "weight, burden"
• selsahts selsahtain "hole"
• seŝu "thing, object"

Verbal suffixes

Two characteristic Athomine verbal suffixes were -enn-, which formed intensives, and -ast-, which formed the opposite:

• prakaŝ -> prakennaŝ "to sleep very soundly"
• sairéŝ -> sairennéŝ "to be very red"
• caimiŝ -> caimastiŝ "to nibble, pick at one's food"
• honéŝ -> honastéŝ "to drizzle"

Inceptive verbs, denoting the start of an action, were formed with -us-:

• honéŝ -> honuséŝ "to begin to rain"
• ekkiŝ -> ekkusiŝ "to set out on a journey"
• ŝexaŝ "to dwell, live" -> ŝexusaŝ "to settle"

-aht- conveyed the idea of ability:

• hanar -> hanahtar "I can sing"
• prakar -> prakahtar "I can sleep"

-am- created adjectival verbs from nouns with the meaning of "to have the quality of":

• hon "water" -> honaméŝ "to be wet", honamóŝ "to wet, make wet"
• skar "fire" -> skaraméŝ "to be hot", skaramóŝ "to heat"

-ust- created adjectival verbs meaning "to have many of":

• mels "cloud" -> melustéŝ "to be cloudy"
• felti "noise" -> feltŭstéŝ "to be noisy"

Finally, many verbs representing the achievement of an action were formerly derived from other verbs with /-su-/, often changing the stem vowel. This formation was no longer productive, but the results were common enough to be worth mentioning:

• saffiŝ "to chase, hunt" -> supsuŝ "to find, discover"
• lóriŝ "to take" -> lsrsuŝ "to get, have, obtain"
• rausiŝ "to take" -> russuŝ "to hold""

Babel text

1. ŝi paic xúŝy mel taucu ŝi its psaksi exkan.
2. ŝi kalsain saur truaxei ísan, resat paic póri Ximar supsŭsene, ŝi arty ŝeksusainene.
3. ŝi saki fastisene, "tettaken kineŝen, ŝi skeruena extaken". ŝi kineŝen piny hérestes ŝi cers piny lihestes larsŭsenen.
4. ŝi fastisene, "raixaŝaken ets ŝi hasts xass fŭrs paic melta hutti, ŝi kamartaken mals, lere mis ŝaiky xúŝus fŭskékeh".
5. ŝi God ets ŝi hasts hársain kalsási raikaina cénal re ŝairtiŝ serai ísan.
6. ŝi God "ŝairaŝak! mel catex rŭps tune, ŝi ehha catex nikus ŝaun cótiŝ tŭ, ŝi mas ínausenel cuahttene" fastisen.
7. "ehteke serai ŝi sprahótaken ŝasi fast, re la saki apeisenen."
8. ŝi God arty mis ŝaiky xúŝus fŭskaisenen, ŝi raixaŝ hasts fannaisen.
9. Ŝut mals Babel namerahan, ŝut arty God fast rŭps sprahaisin, ŝi arty mis ŝaiky xúŝus fŭskaisine.

... and here's a grammatical analysis, with comments where necessary.

1. And in world(gen) one language and few words(part) were.
2. And men from east(dat) go(past imperf), plain in country(gen) Shimar found-they, and there live(incep)-they.
3. And each-other(dat) said-they, "make(1pl imp)-we-3sing bricks and burn(perf part) aux(1pl imp)-them". And bricks role(gen) stone(part) and clay role(gen) mortar(part) had-they-3sing. The perfective of "let us burn them" is used here to give the idea of "completely".
4. And said-they, "build(1pl imp)-it city and tower rel(part) head in clouds(dat) is(fut 3sing), and to-us-give(imp)we-3sing name, neg-so-that on surface(gen) world(part) scatter(fut ext)-us-indef.". "... with its head in the clouds" is difficult to render into Athomine; I've used "whose head is in the clouds".
5. And God city and tower sons men(part) build(perf part) auxilary(past)-rel-3sing in-order-to see down went..
6. And God "behold(1 pl)! one only people(part) are-they, and this only start(part) their do(vn) is, and everything want(int future)-they-rel do(future)-possible-they". Note the Athomine idiom for "only one", i.e. "one only" plus the partitive.
7. "go(imp)-we down and confuse(imp)-we-3sing their(part) speak(pres vn), so-that not each-other(dat) understand(ext pl)-they-3sing. Note the choice of the external of "understand" here.
8. And God there on surface(gen) world(part) scattered-he-them, and building tower(part) forsook(ext)-they-it.
9. Therefore name Babel to-it-gave-indef-it, beacuse there God speech people(part) confused-he-it, and there on surface(gen) world(part) scattered-he-them.

Vocabulary

• apar apaŝ apaine to understand
• ats atoin pig
• aune ótt ŭne to need
• axu axuen idea, thought, notion
• caime cétt címe to eat
• catex catexen only
• caul caulen eye
• causér causéŝ causeine to be long
• cers cerŭn clay
• cohér cohéŝ coheine to be cold
• cóŝ céŝ cótiŝ to do; irregular (external cuaŝ)
• ekke eht íse to go, come
• ets etsain city, town
• faltir faltiŝ faltíne to hear, listen
• fannér fannéŝ fannine to forsake, leave behind
• faste fast fessir to speak, say (note: past was thematic where present was athematic)
• felti feltian noise, sound
• fŭrs fŭrain head, top
• fŭsker fŭskéŝ fŭskeine to scatter
• hanar hanaŝ hanaine to sing
• hárs hárain son, descendant
• hasts hastein tower
• hérests hérestain stone, rock (substance)
• honéh honéŝ honeinah to rain (always with impersonal subject)
• hórs hórŭn flower
• huŝir huŝiŝ huŝíne to be situated
• íne ítt ísse to want
• kals kalsain man
• kapps kappén goose
• keŝér keŝéŝ keŝeine to be large
• korér koréŝ koreine to be fast, quick
• larsur larsuŝ larsŭne to have
• lehar lehaŝ lekse to slide, slip (note: athematic past)
• lets leŝain bread
• lihests lihestain mortar
• lirs liroin hair
• mals malsén name
• mare mart mere to give
• max maxain boy
• mels melín cloud
• murér muréŝ mureine to be brown
• niku nukuon start, beginning
• onar onaŝ osse to cut (note: athematic past)
• pice pixt extar to be, exist (note: thematic past)
• pinu pinuan role, stead
• pórs pórin region, country
• prakar prakaŝ prakaine to sleep
• psah psahen word
• rais raisein person
• raixar raixaŝ raixaine to build
• resat resaten plain, flat area
• rics ricein house
• rŭps rupain people
• sairér sairséŝ saireine to be red
• saks each other (declined like mals)
• serai down
• skerór skeróŝ skeroine to burn
• socir sociŝ socíne to tire, be tired
• sprahór sprahóŝ sprahoine to confuse
• sulór sulóŝ suloine to wash
• tefe teft tepse to sit
• teŝe tett teŝine to make, do
• torts torŝain tail
• ŝaiks ŝaikain surface
• ŝairir ŝairiŝ ŝíre to see (note: athematic past)
• xúŝu xúŝuon world